Shortly after 0200 local time on 21 November 1970, a
raiding force of 56 men began one of the most daring American operations of the Vietnam
War, a nighttime raid 23 miles west of Hanoi on the Son Tay prisoner of war (POW) camp.
The Son Tay raid was conceived in May 1970 based on imagery suggesting that 70 American
POWs were being held at this isolated compound in the heart of North Vietnam. The
raids six-month planning and training process, under the leadership of Brigadier
General Leroy Manor (USAF) as overall commander, and Colonel Arthur D. Bull
Simons (USA) as his deputy, stands as arguably the preeminent model of all special
operations missions conducted by the US military. A highly disciplined, joint team with
clear lines of authority and responsibility organized the raid while mobilizing extensive
intelligence and logistical resources to achieve their mission of effecting a rescue. The
raiders rehearsed 170 times under the most realistic possible conditions, including night
live-fire exercises in a complete Son Tay mockup built at Duke Field, Florida.1 Mission security was assured through rigorous
compartmentalization and the practice of completely tearing down the camp mockup prior to
daily Soviet satellite overflights.2

Just as the D-Day
invasion had hinged on suitable weather forecasts, the Son Tay raid was executed in a tiny
window of nights dictated by the need for adequate moonlight and the vagaries of the
tropical monsoon season. After final approval, the strike force launched from Thailand and
expertly rejoined 15 aircraft in total darkness under radio silence. Two MC-130 Combat
Talons led a low-altitude night ingress, penetrating the North Vietnamese air defense
system via direct terrain masking through corridors identified by the

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National Security
Agency. Due to the vastly different cruising speeds of the helicopters, the MC-130s were
obliged to fly at 105 knots, 145 knots below their normal cruising speed and 10 knots
above stalling speed, for the entire three hour, 23-minute trip to the target. The US Air
Force aviators participating in the raid flew 368 sorties and logged 1,017 hours preparing
for this incredibly demanding mission.3

The strike force
approached Son Tay undetected at 0218 on 21 November 1970. Simultaneously, the US Navy
began a massive diversion operation over Haiphong Harbor.4 The first phase of the rescue plan called for an HH-53
helicopter to overfly the prison courtyard and destroy two guard towers with gunfire, a
task executed perfectly. Next, an HH-3 was intentionally crashed inside the Son Tay
compound. Raid planners believed the aircraft would fit, but six months of additional tree
growth snared the helicopter as it arrived, causing a harder-than-expected landing and one
of only two US injuries of the raid, a broken ankle.5 The 14 men in the crashed HH-3 were tasked to neutralize the
compound guards and immediately begin freeing prisoners; unfortunately, they soon
discovered there were no American POWs in the camp. At this moment, the only miscue of the
raid came into play: a navigation error landed the largest part of the strike
force22 men, including Colonel Simonsat the Secondary School 400
meters south of the main Son Tay compound. The raiders encountered minimal resistance at
the Son Tay compound itself, but Simons and the men at the Secondary School found
themselves engaged in a firefight with soldiers who were much taller than Orientals
and not wearing normal NVA [North Vietnamese Army] dress.6 Simons and his men had stumbled on a major force of
Chinese or Russian advisors a mere 400 meters from the prison; the Americans decimated
more than 100 occupants of the Secondary School before rejoining the main strike force and
initiating a withdrawal.7 The raiding force was on the ground in North Vietnam for 27
minutes, flawlessly executing their well-rehearsed plan and successfully switching to a
contingency plan after the unplanned landing at the Secondary School.

Three days after the
raid, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird convened a Pentagon news conference to announce
that a raid had been attempted, but regrettably no prisoners were found.
Twelve minutes and five seconds

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into the news
conference, a reporter asked the Secretary on whom do you blame the intelligence
failure, thus setting the tone for all subsequent press analysis of the Son Tay
mission.8 Despite the strike forces bold achievement in killing over
100 enemy troops and penetrating the heart of North Vietnam with impunity, the initial
public reaction to the raid was one of disappointment for its failure to rescue any POWs.

The
Intelligence Picture

The discovery of the
Son Tay camp was the product of a painstaking reconnaissance imagery search undertaken by
the 1127th Field Activities Group, an obscure unit at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Tasked with
locating active POW camps, analysts at the 1127th first identified camp activity at Son
Tay on 9 May 1970 after discovering POW uniforms arranged in the courtyard in the shape of
the letters SAR,9 and rocks arranged in the letter
K,10 both search and rescue codes. What
really grabbed our attention was another pile of rocks that had been laid out in Morse
Code that said there were at least six men in that prison who were going to die if they
didnt get help fast.11

Through the
remainder of May 1970, a joint planning team analyzed additional photography and sought
sources of confirmation. Although the planners were provided access to the full range of
US intelligence resources, certain characteristics of North Vietnam created severe limits
on what types of information were actually available. The closed nature of the North
Vietnamese society made human intelligence (HUMINT) of any kind very difficult to obtain.
Limited communications infrastructure and excellent communications security discipline on
the part of the North Vietnamese eliminated signals intelligence (SIGINT) as a source. The
Son Tay planners were told that they would be almost totally dependent on
photographic reconnaissance for the intelligence so vital to the success of the
raid.12 In an effort to maximize effectiveness,
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) formed a dedicated team of experts to analyze photos
of Son Tay being produced by satellite reconnaissance, SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft,
Buffalo Hunter low-altitude drones, and RF-4 aircraft missions. Southeast
Asian weather further hampered intelligence collectionfrequent cloud cover and the
need to minimize low-altitude Buffalo Hunter overflights at Son Tay conspired to block
intelligence. Early summer photos showed prisoners standing within the Son Tay compound;
by August 1970, however, interpreters had noticed a decrease in the level of activity
at Son Tay.13 Efforts to get more Buffalo Hunter photos
proved fruitless; of eight missions launched, six succumbed to maintenance failure or
anti-aircraft fire, and the last two failed to image the target. The final mission drone
began a planned turn directly over the Son Tay campand took a perfect photograph of
the sky.14

121/22

As raid launch time
approached, the CIA inserted an agent in the vicinity of Son Tay, but nothing was
discovered.15 Two days prior to execution, a final
source of intelligence surfaced in the guise of a mid-level North Vietnamese bureaucrat in
the ministry charged with POW affairs. Although this individual had been working with the
United States for more than a year, the CIA did not admit his existence to the Son Tay
planners or query him until it became apparent that no further Buffalo Hunter imagery
could be produced. Once queried, this usually reliable foreign intelligence source
in the field reported that no POWs were present at Son Tay, instead identifying a
heretofore unknown camp at Dong Hoi.16 This
intelligence revelation created an immediate, time-critical crisis in the Son Tay execution decisionmaking process.

The Political
Backdrop

In World War
II a mission such as the Son Tay raid could have been ordered by a division commander; but
in Vietnam, operations werent that simple, observed Richard Harris in an
article for American History Illustrated. Vietnam was a war of politics in
which political expediency took priority over military necessity. The order for this
mission had to come from President Nixon.17

The Son Tay raid was
planned and executed at a time when the United States was intent on negotiating a
conclusion to American involvement in the war. Substantial ground combat forces had
already been withdrawn from the south as the process of Vietnamization went
forward. The sole remaining obstacle to concluding this chapter of history was to gain
return of the 1,463 POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia.

Beyond the goal of
freeing POWs, the United States also sought to increase its clout at the ongoing Paris
Peace Talks and perhaps force North Vietnamese concessions.18 The administration saw the raid as a way of
indicating that the United States could inflict punishment, even without resuming bombing
of the North, if North Vietnam did not become more flexible at the stalemated peace
talks.19 In counterpoise was the domestic
political imperative to avoid the impression that this raid represented a widening of the
war,20 especially given that since July 1968
there had been a two-year bombing pause over North Vietnam.21

The cast of
decisionmakers for the Son Tay raid was very small due to the sensitive nature of the
mission. Brigadier General Donald Blackburn (USA), who held the post of Special Assistant
for Counter-Insurgency and Special Activities on the Joint Staff, approved the preliminary
raid planning. He in turn sought approval from Admiral Thomas Moorer, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. After unit training was under way, General Blackburn and Admiral
Moorer briefed and gained approval from Secretary of Defense Laird,

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who first introduced
President Richard Nixon to the raid concept in late September 1970. Nixon accepted the
plan in principle but asked that National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger be
briefed on the mission.

Until this point,
all intelligence decisions related to mission execution were based on overhead imagery,
which had been sporadic due to cloud cover over North Vietnam. On 8 October 1970, planners
met with Kissinger. Their briefing was well received, but they were told that mission
approval would be delayed for at least several weeks due to ongoing political
discussions, which later proved to be the first overtures toward China by the Nixon
Administration.22

Dr. Kissinger was
greatly impressed with the thoroughness of the planning but feared that an unsuccessful
mission might create more POWs.23 When
Kissinger asked General Blackburn about the odds of success, Blackburn replied that he
could give a 95 to 97 percent assurance of success.24 At the time of the 8 October briefing, new SR-71 imagery
of Son Tay revealed very little camp activity and no sign of POWs. Although the raiding
force was mission-ready by 7 October, execution was now on hold as the final political and
intelligence drama played out in Washington.25

Down to the
Wire

On 12 November 1970,
strike force personnel began to deploy to Thailand. That same day, Secretary of Defense
Laird received provisional approval from President Nixon for mission execution, with a
final go order to follow. The next day, word arrived via peace activist
intermediaries that six POWs had died while in captivity in North Vietnam, adding further
urgency to the decision process.26 Five
days later, on 18 November, Admiral Moorer met with President Nixon, Dr. Kissinger,
Secretary of State William Rogers, and Secretary Laird, seeking final mission approval.27 The President was very impressed with the quality of the
presentation and lapped it up like an eight-year-old at his first cowboy
movie.28 When [Admiral Moorer] mentioned
that the mission would be canceled if there was any sign that the enemy was aware of the
objective, Nixon protested: Damn, Tom, lets not let that happen. I want
this thing to go.29 The
lack of activity at the Son Tay camp was not revealed at this meetingthe President
authorized transmission of the execute message later that afternoon.30

On 19 November,
after the President approved the mission and one day before actual launch, word reached
General Blackburn of the North Vietnamese HUMINT source who reported no prisoners at
Son Tay. This HUMINT report triggered a massive reanalysis of available information
and demands for an updated intelligence estimate.

123/24

For the next 12
hours, General Blackburn, DIA Director Lieutenant General Donald Bennett, Admiral Moorer,
and Secretary Laird struggled with the significance of this news and what impact it should
have on the mission. General Blackburn was certain that the mission should proceed; yet
his confidence wavered as he expressed great frustration with the quality of the
intelligence analysis. One minute they were sure the prisoners were
gone, the next they were suspicious that POWs had been moved back into Son
Tay.31 General Bennett appeared before Admiral
Moorer on the morning of 20 November with two stacks of evidence, one saying
theyve moved, and an equally large one saying theyre still
there.32 Despite this muddled intelligence
picture, General Bennett eventually recommended that the mission proceed, primarily on the
basis of the 95 percent assurance that the raiders could safely complete their
mission.33 Armed with the concurrence of his three
subordinates, Secretary of Defense Laird routinely notified the President that the mission
would proceed as planned. The White House concurred with the Pentagons intentions.
With the raid due to launch in hours, the Administration was not interested in doubts. As
Admiral Harry D. Train, at that time the Executive Assistant to Admiral Moorer, later put
it, They didnt want to know.34

Groupthink at
the Pentagon

The Son Tay mission
go decision provides a rich lesson in group decision dynamics and political
maneuvering. The White House and Pentagon both fell victim to groupthink as
they struggled to arrive at a mission launch decision. Unknown to each other, each group
weighed different criteria for mission launch, and each group defined ultimate mission
success differently.

Author Irving Janis
first described groupthink in 1971 as part of his ground-breaking study of the Kennedy
Administrations conduct of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Groupthink happens
when individuals allow a desire for solidarity and unanimity within a group to override
their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.35
Groupthink has been repeatedly cited as a contributor to calamity, most recently in the
NASA Challenger and Columbia disasters.

In the face of a
confused and deteriorating intelligence picture, Secretary of Defense Laird recommended a
mission go to the White House. This recommendation came despite the fact that
the US military had not conducted a successful POW rescue since the Civil War. The
experience in Southeast Asia had been particularly bleak. Between 1966 and 1970, US forces
had mounted forty-five raids in Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam to rescue American POWs
and had freed one. He died shortly after [rescue] of injuries his captors inflicted
moments before he was rescued.36

124/25

The Son Tay raiders
executed their mission perfectly, yet disaster lurked close at hand. Had the lucky mistake
of assaulting the Secondary School not intervened, the raiders would likely have met
considerably more effective enemy resistance and less tactical success. Janiss
description of groupthink played a classic role in Pentagon decisionmaking:37

Illusion of
Invulnerability: Everything is going to work out all right because we are a
special group. In an era of McNamarian statistics, the 95 to 97 percent
assurance of success placed an exact (albeit contrived) value on the Son Tay
raiders invulnerability.

Belief in the Inherent Morality of the Group: Under the
sway of groupthink, members automatically assume the rightness of their cause. The
rightness of rescuing American POWs was unassailable. In the final
presidential approval briefing of 18 November 1970, President Nixon asked, How could
anyone not approve this?38

Collective Rationalization: A mindset of hear no evil,
see no evil, speak no evil.39 At a
critical 20 November 1970 meeting, General Blackburn, General Bennett, and Admiral Moorer
met to consider the latest intelligence and decide the fate of the mission. General
Blackburn, as the missions sponsor and planner, was determined that the mission
should go despite the intelligence, but he feared that General Bennett, the
head of DIA, would veto the mission. The late Benjamin Schemmer, the preeminent Son Tay
historian, related the exchange: Moorer asked [Bennett] what do you recommend?
I recommend we go, Bennett said. Blackburn tried not to reveal his relief.
Bennett had the death warrant in his hand, [General Blackburn] said later.
I thought, damn, the whole thing is going to collapse. I wanted to go.40
Once General Bennett had agreed to overlook the unfavorable intelligence, the groupthink
path was clear.

Out-group Stereotypes: The inputs of individuals outside the
group are not valued if they do not conform to the groups view. Although mission
planners had repeatedly lamented the lack of HUMINT and the overreliance on technical
means, when the HUMINT contradicted their desire to go, the HUMINT was
ignored. Twenty-six years later, in a 1996 interview, former

125/26

Secretary of Defense
Laird said that when presented with the information from the Hanoi HUMINT source, he did
not judge it to be accurate or believable.41

Self-Censorship: Individuals with dissenting views remain
silent, driven by a desire to remain a team player or a fear of losing
influence. In a 1993 book, Admiral Train admitted: Twelve hours before the raid we
had fairly high confidence that [Son Tay] was empty. The photography showed the grass had
not been walked on in ten days. On the basis of the photographic evidence alone we knew
that it was empty.42 Despite being personally confident that the camp was empty, a
four-star flag officer remained either silent or chose not to forcefully argue his case.

Illusion of Unanimity: Perpetuating the fiction that
everyone is in full accord. Silence is interpreted as agreement.43
This aspect of groupthink is difficult to detect in this case since all principle
decisionmakers believed that executing the raid was the correct choice. Had the mission
ended in catastrophe, the cast of doubters and second-guessers would probably be much
larger.

Direct Pressure on Dissenters: When faced with the unwanted
report that the camp was empty, General Blackburn asked his DIA intelligence team:
How in the hell they could make heads or tails of the data? He was flabbergasted by
their interpretation. One minute they were sure the prisoners were gone, the next they
were suspicious they had moved back into Son Tay.44 This caustic
reaction was prompted by intelligence that did not fit the desired picture. The implied
message to the dissenters was, I will stop yelling at you when you tell
me what I want to hear.

Self-Appointed Mindguards: Mindguards protect a leader
from assault by troublesome ideas.45 The Pentagon advocates of the Son Tay mission went to considerable
effort to insulate the White House from unwanted details. In his White House Years
memoir, Henry Kissinger relates: We knew the risk of casualties, but none of the
briefings that led to the decision to proceed had ever mentioned the possibility that the
camp might be empty.46 Although Secretary of Defense Laird
provided regular updates to President Nixon concerning a decrease in camp activity, he
chose not to make him aware of the HUMINT source. As far as Laird was concerned, the
decision to execute was final and the new information concerning the POWs, regardless of
accuracy, would not change that decision. At this point, apparently the execution of
policy was more important than cluttering the decision with new information,
regardless of its potential impact.47

Groupthink at
the White House

The small circle of
Nixon advisors that played a Son Tay decisionmaking role also fell victim to groupthink.
Presidents can act only on the information they are provided; thus groupthink is a
constant hazard. In Ending

126/27

the Vietnam War,
Henry Kissinger pens a mea culpa for his role in the Son Tay raid decision: A
President, and even more his National Security Adviser, must take nothing on faith; they
must question every assumption and probe every fact. Not everything that is plausible is
true, for those who put forward plans for action have a psychological disposition to
marshal the facts that support their position.48

Although there is
documentary evidence that four different Nixon Administration officials heard the mission
concept brief (Nixon, Kissinger, Secretary Rogers, and Deputy National Security Advisor
Major General Alexander Haig), it appears that only Nixon and Kissinger participated in
the final deliberations with Secretary of Defense Laird.49 The exact role played by Henry Kissinger and how much
information he received is called into question in Kissingers book, White House
Years: After the failure of the raid I was informed of a message sent in code by
a prisoner of war that the camp was closed on July 14. This was interpreted by
military analysts to mean that the gates were locked; it had not been considered of
sufficient importance to bring to the attention of the White House.50
Kissingers recollection is not consistent with that of other participants. Either by
a conscious decision of the President, or an inability to accurately recall events,
Kissinger does not seem to have been intimately involved in the final Son Tay decision.
Thus, the White House decision group was comprised of President Nixon and
Secretary of Defense Laird.

Nixon, Kissinger,
and Haig had all been present when the magical 95 percent assurance of success
line was uttered, buttressing the groups view of its invulnerability. The President
was especially certain of the inherent morality of the mission. In addition to the POW
rescue aspect, Nixon saw the raid as a chance to boost his approval rating and gain
public support for the war.51 Despite the risks, the mission offered
President Nixon a chance to strike back against his domestic enemies.

The White House was
overrun with self-appointed mindguards. On the morning of 18 November 1970, after
President Nixon had received his

127/28

final Son Tay raid
briefing, Major General Haig asked Admiral Moorer: If this thing fails, maybe we
could find a way to let the Old Man off the hook? Hes taken nothing but bum raps on
every decision hes made about Vietnam. We cant let him down on this one. You
know what I mean?52 Haigs intent was to shield Nixon from the consequences of
his decision. Secretary Lairds selective reporting of intelligence cast him as the
Administrations chief mindguard. Even though Laird and his staff struggled with the
significance of the HUMINT information for more than 24 hours, and nearly canceled the
mission as a result, Laird did not notify the President of the existence of this latest
troublesome information.

Same Mission,
Different Goals

The most stunning
aspect of the Son Tay raid is the wide and subtle goal divergence that existed between the
Pentagon and the White House. In the minds of the Pentagon military planners, the Son Tay
raid was a high-risk tactical mission undertaken to rescue American POWs being held
captive under harsh conditions in North Vietnam. Colonel Simons summed this viewpoint in
his pre-mission speech to the raiders: We are going to rescue 70 American prisoners
of war, maybe more, at a camp called Son Tay. This is something that American prisoners
have a right to expect from their fellow soldiers.53 To
the Pentagon planners, conflicting intelligence in the eleventh hour threatened the sole
objective of the raid. No POWs, no raid.

President
Nixons motives were far more complex and closely guarded. Although Nixon also sought
to rescue POWs, the Son Tay raid provided an ideal vehicle to forward his emerging
strategy of imposing pressure on the North Vietnamese and convincing them that the
Administration was not to be trifled with. According to historian Jeffrey Kimball:

In his memoirs,
Kissinger revealed the broader diplomatic and strategic reasons behind the November 1970
[Son Tay] air raids. Besides diverting North Vietnamese defenses from Son Tay, they were
designed to retaliate for the abrupt rejection of our peace proposal; and to slow down the
North Vietnamese dry-season supply effort in the South. Thus, besides its humanitarian and
political purposes, the combined operation of rescue and bombing had military and
psychological purposesan adjective Nixon used in his memoirs. [Nixon] commented that
it revealed [to the North Vietnamese] their vulnerability to a kind of attack they
had not experienced before. The rescue mission demonstrated that the US could get past
North Vietnamese air defenses and operate in [their] rear. It was a true [rescue] activity
but also designed to show that Nixons threats should be taken seriously.54

Unlike those at the
Pentagon who viewed the Son Tay raid as a POW rescue, President Nixon saw it as a
combination of a rescue, a threat to the

128/29

North Vietnamese,
and a salvo against his domestic critics. At least one modern scholar has gone so far as
to ask the question: Was Son Tay a rescue mission or an attack on North Vietnam
disguised as a rescue mission?55

Numerous Pentagon
officials expressed surprise at the White Houses indifference to the reports of
decreased camp activity. Their concerns might have been far more muted had they understood
the fundamentally different objectives of the White House and the Pentagon. Whereas the
militarys launch decision hinged solely on rescuing POWs, the White House saw great
opportunity in safely executing a raid into North Vietnam, even if no POWs were rescued.
Those in the Pentagon believed they were recommending go on a tactical
mission. The White House had long since approved a strategic mission.

Intelligence
Failure

Intelligence
failure is an overused phrase in military history, yet it certainly applies in this
case. While the vast US intelligence apparatus was able to marshal a multitude of facts to
prepare the raiders for their mission, in the end they were unable to accurately provide
the one fact upon which everything else hingedwhether or not there were any
prisoners at Son Tay. Barely second in magnitude to this most fundamental oversight was
the inexplicable failure to detect a large military force 400 meters from the objective at
the Secondary Schoolonly good fortune in the form of a misdirected landing force and
flawless tactical execution on the part of the raiders overcame this threat to the
mission. The Son Tay raiders themselves praised the quality of the intelligence product
they received, yet it is worth asking what the outcome might have been if the intelligence
had been able to retarget this raiding team in July 1970 to some other campone that
was occupied.

A junior partner to
the failure of intelligence is the incredible level of compartmentalization within the war
effort and the lack of measures to avoid working toward conflicting ends. The Son Tay
mission was wholly dependent on high-quality targeting to ensure the presence of
prisoners. Although the CIA had been cultivating a human source in North Vietnam for more
than a year, the question of POW locations was not posed to him until September 1970, and
then only after it had become apparent that imagery alone would not suffice to confirm the
status of Son Tay. Had the CIA been more forthcoming with its resources, an eleventh-hour
decisionmaking crisis might have been averted.

Finally, a classic
case of Clausewitzian friction and unforeseen consequences came into play. From 1967 to
1972, the CIA conducted cloud seeding activities throughout Laos in an effort to trigger
flooding in agrarian North Vietnam. Although the effectiveness of the cloud seeding effort
is im-

129/30

possible to prove,
rainfall in Laos and North Vietnam in 1970 was approximately five times greater than
normal.56 Flooding on the Son Tay River and its
threat to the prison camp wall was the reason that the POWs were evacuated by the North
Vietnamese in July 1970,57 approximately four months before the raid, possibly meaning that
the CIA had an unintended hand in the demise of the mission.

The Son Tay raid
became many things to many people. To the vast majority of the world audience, the raid
was seen as a strategic failure that did not rescue any POWs. However, in the political
and diplomatic world of President Nixon, Dr. Kissinger, and their North Vietnamese
adversaries, Son Tay opened a new chapter of presidential policy and aggressiveness as the
Nixon Administration sought to force the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table and
hasten the American chapter of the Vietnam story to a close.

From a tactical
perspective, the Son Tay raid was a model for planning and execution. The greatest
achievement of the raid was never considered a mission objectivealthough no POWs
were rescued, the raid forced the North Vietnamese to consolidate all POW camps, in some
cases ending years of isolation for POWs and raising morale immensely.58
Despite this unforeseen benefit, the fact remains that two more years would pass before
the POWs were released.

Failure invites
intense scrutiny. The casualty-free execution of the Son Tay mission has deprived
groupthink scholars of a treasury of lessons that apparently have gone unnoticed, buried
beneath the intelligence failure. The Pentagons Son Tay go
decision was a classic episode of groupthink, made possible primarily by one
officers blithe assurance that this mission had a 95- to 97-percent probability
of success. Had it not been for the lucky mistake that lent tactical surprise to the
raiders at the Secondary School, Son Tay might rank much higher in groupthink catastrophe
scholarship.

Arguing a case in
hindsight is always easier. In the end, however, a sound argument can be made that with
better intelligence, less compartmentalization, a more serious consideration of
alternatives, and, most important, less groupthink, the Son Tay raid might have met with
great success rescheduled as the Dong Hoi raid of February 1971.

58. Lewis Sorley, A
Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of Americas Last Years in
Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999), p. 229.

Lieutenant Colonel Mark Amidon,
USAF, is a 2005 graduate of the Air War College and has been selected for promotion to
colonel. He is also a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and holds a masters
degree in engineering from the University of Arkansas. Lieutenant Colonel Amidon is a
Command Pilot, a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, and has 3,250 flying hours
in the F-15C.